


The Sundays

by EmmyAngua



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Sherlock Series 3 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-06
Updated: 2014-02-06
Packaged: 2018-01-11 10:47:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmyAngua/pseuds/EmmyAngua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a week after Sherlock’s shooting and Mrs. Holmes has finally got her hands on some British papers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sundays

Mrs. Holmes rarely gets homesick. She misses her boys all the time, and she sometimes misses her friends, but the red buses and the reassuringly solid pound coins aren’t a part of her identity in the same way that England is stamped across the soul of her boys. They always did take things like that to heart.

 

Her husband feels exactly the same. He gets very worked up about British traffic and is glad to be away from it (his argument with Mycroft about roundabouts is one of the few times she’s ever seen him raise his voice to his son.)

 

What she does miss are Sunday mornings.

 

When she was young and full of vim a Sunday morning was no different to a Monday or Wednesday, but just like meeting the love of your life, these things sneak up on you. Those Sunday mornings early in her marriage were the best ones; waking up and hearing the sound of her husband (an early riser) moving around in the kitchen and waiting for him to climb the stairs before reappearing with two mugs of tea held precariously in one hand and a huge pile of Sunday papers tucked under his other arm.

 

It’s not the same here. For a start, he can’t just nip to the shop (store is such an ugly word) for British newspapers (she may not hold many things about Britain sacred, but the idea of reading American papers in bed makes her shudder). Early on in their retirement she went on a mission to find a regular supply and found a small shop near one of the most hideous hotels she’s ever seen. They were (after she was quite firm with the owner) prepared to keep international newspapers back for her to collect once a week.

 

Today she’s only making her weekly journey out of habit. Her mind is on other things; Sherlock is in hospital. Every instinct in her body is screaming to get the very next flight out, but Mycroft was against it.

 

“He’s out of danger… perhaps you might come back in a few months when he’s up to visitors.”

 

“Mycroft, you think you’re being subtle, but I can hear the words _‘when he’s up to a motherly onslaught’_ as clearly as if you’d said them aloud.”

 

The problem with having such a powerful son is that is makes booking flights very tricky when he doesn’t want you to leave the country. She was quite prepared to find a way regardless (it would have only meant a five day series of flights via New Zealand, Japan, Turkey, and Belgium) but her husband only smiled faintly when she showed him the route.

 

“If you book that he’ll only have us put on some sort of list that means we can’t leave the country.”

 

In the end she had no choice but to wait. She got reports at least twice a day, ordered flowers, left messages, sent emails, and was still yet to actually hear Sherlock’s voice. No wonder she’d been encouraged to go and get the papers for Sunday.

 

“Sorry I’m a day late,” she announces upon arriving. “Family emergency.”

 

“Ah yes,” Joe looks nervous. “I’m afraid we don’t have any papers left for you Mrs. Holmes.”

 

She glares. “Has Mycroft been on at you again? I keep telling him; he can’t stop me seeing the newspapers every time there’s an article about Sherlock that I won’t like. I already know what they’re going to be talking about…”

 

Her throat tightens a little at the idea of it.

 

“I don’t think you do…” Joe mutters.

 

“Get me the papers!” she barks. She’s entirely fed up of this shilly-shallying.

 

Joe, stuck between mysterious orders from someone he’s never met and the very real threat of Mrs. Holmes in the flesh, makes the wise decision and begins bagging them up.

 

 

\--

 

 

Normally if there’s something that Mycroft doesn’t want her to read she would have started on the papers the second she got home, but Mrs. Holmes has no desire to see the papers pick over the grisly details of her son’s near death experience and so they sit in the hall as usual.

 

Sunday rolls around and it’s almost as good as an old Sunday. She wakes to the sound of a spoon clinking in a mug downstairs and she must doze off for a minute or two because when she wakes again her husband is putting the mug down on the bedside table and getting back into his side of the bed. There’s also toast and marmite (that’s the only thing he misses.) The stack of papers settles between them.

 

She takes The Monday’s Telegraph, he takes the Independent. All is silent for a while.

 

Eventually they get to the tabloids. He takes the Mail, she takes the Mirror.

 

That’s as far as they get because Sherlock is looking up at them from the front of both pages.

 

“What on earth-?“

 

“Sherlock with a-?”

**SHAG-A-LOT HOLMES.**

 

Mrs. Holmes looks at her husband.

 

They start laughing.

 

“One of his schemes?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“You don’t think this woman is really-?”

 

“No!”

 

Mrs. Holmes grins. Her son is alive and surrounded by the absolute madness that makes him happy. That’s good enough for the time being.

 


End file.
